1. Implementing Procurement
  2. Document Approvals in Procurement

Document Approvals in Procurement

Once document approvals are set up, users can review approvals generated based on these rules before the document is submitted. Users can also insert additional approvers or FYI participants if necessary. The approvals list is displayed in both tabular and graphical layouts.

Upon submission of the document, approvals are triggered and the document will be routed to approvers or FYI participants for review and action through the BPM Worklist application. Approvers and FYI participants can also be notified through email. Submitters can view the approvals progress and status for submitted document. The application stores every action performed by a user on a document including who performed the action and when it was performed.

Approval Notifications: Worklist Task

Approvers can access Worklist tasks for documents pending their disposition with cloud applications. The actions that the approver can perform on the Worklist tasks are:

  • Reassign or Delegate tasks

    • The reassign action transfers the task to another user or group. The task will then be routed based on the specified user s hierarchy.

    • The delegate action allows another user to act on your behalf.

  • Request information from the preparer, a previous approver or another user in the enterprise.

  • Approve or Reject the task.

  • Add attachments to the Worklist task.

  • Add comments to the Worklist task.

  • Insert additional approvers to the approval task.

  • Modify a requisition if the approver has the privilege to edit requisitions pending his approval.

Email notifications

When an approval task is sent out as an email, it contains only key information including attachments to help the approver make his approval decision. If there are more than 25 lines in the requisition then the approver will have to log into the application to view the remaining lines. The approver can approve or reject via email response. To perform other actions, the approver should access the worklist task within cloud applications. Email notifications aren't supported by Oracle BPM for position hierarchy based routings.

Modifications

You can modify notifications to hide displayed fields or to render hidden by default fields, as well as add static text within the notification.

To modify a notification, the administrator must first generate the notification. From the online notification, click the Edit link that's displayed on the top left corner. This will launch the page composer for the notification page.

For requisition approval and purchasing document approval requests, the email notification can be modified separately from the online notifications as viewed in the Worklist application. However, you can modify both layouts when using page composer from the online notification. The section for email notification will come after the online notification section. For all other notifications, modifications would apply to both online and email versions.

Troubleshoot Approval Issues

In Oracle Self Service Procurement, there are several instances when the requisition approval fails due to one or more of these reasons:

  • Expected approvers don't appear in the hierarchy

  • Requisitions are rejected

To troubleshoot the causes of these issues related to requisition approvals, a new diagnostic report is available for users and Oracle support.

You can generate the report by running the Requisition Approval - Validate diagnostic test. Follow these steps to run the test and generate the report:

  1. Log in with a user assigned Business Flow Troubleshooting role. Click the User name to access the menu. Click Run Diagnostic Tests.

    This opens the Diagnostic Dashboard.

  2. Search for the diagnostic test, in the Test Name field enter Requisition Approval%. Select the test and click Add to Run.

  3. The test is added in the right panel and indicates the required parameters in the Input Status field by the yellow icon. Click the icon to open a dialogue window that accepts the input parameters.

  4. Enter the requisition number that you want to troubleshoot.

  5. Notice the green tick after the parameter values are entered.

  6. The next step is to run the tests. Select the check box in the corresponding row and click Run. Optionally, you can provide a run name in the Run Name text box. If you don't provide a run name, a system generated test run name is used. A confirmation message is displayed with the test run name.

  7. Click the refresh button on the table below to monitor the status of the test and to check the report when completed. Click the icon under the report column to view the test report.

  8. The report opens in a new dialogue window that displays all the executions for a given run. A link is present against each execution to view the test report.

  9. Click the link to view the main report.

When you run the test, it evaluates all the configured rules against the requisition transaction data and presents this information:

  • Failed Participants: List of enabled participants where all enabled rules evaluated to Fail.

  • Participants without Any Rules: List of participants with no rules defined.

  • AutoReject Rules: List of enabled rules with AutoReject action.

  • Passed Rules: List of enabled rules that evaluated to Pass.

  • Invalid Rules: List of enabled rules with invalid rule conditions.

Based on the report, you can troubleshoot and take corrective action at the rule or the transaction level to achieve the desired approval hierarchy and routing.